ABSTRACT
Korea is divided by a line drawn on a map during an international conflict. The map showed Korea to be a very small part of the world, an area about which little was known by those who were settling her fate. Because parallels of lati tude were easily identifiable on the map, the thirty-eighth parallel became a boundary on the ground dividing this nation into two parts. The purpose of this division was to provide a meeting place for the Russians, who had recently entered the war in Manchuria with the intention of sweeping down the Korean peninsula, and for the Americans, who had been fighting the war, and winning it for some years, with the intention of going into Korea from the south. Some where the two military forces would meet. The records show that the thirtyeighth parallel was established for the purpose of accepting military surrender of the Japanese forces alone; it was to be a temporary demarcation. It has now become a permanent line of division between the east and the west, and a part of the iron curtain.
